Rubi said:
Fantasy gridiron football emerged in 1962 when Bill Winkenbach, then part owner of the Oakland Raiders football team, gathered with some friends in a New York City hotel, and together they created the first fantasy football league, which was dubbed the GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League ...
I started playing in 1996 with a group of guys from work,that league lasted until 2006 so I went "online" to continue my "hobby".
What year did you start playing? Is it a hobby? An obsession? A pastime?
Let's talk.....
I don't like people laying claim to being the first. Rotisserie baseball was a thing for a very long time.
Since the web, I've met a ton of people that played "rotisserie baseball but with football." None of us knew each other and I didn't know these dudes mentioned but yet we all separately played our first season of FF.
33 years for me.
I've only not been in the playoffs three times. (The year of my divorce, dad died, and no excuse) Somewhere I have a list of championships and need to add recent years to tally that. I've won national contests several times too. I used to brag in here and RSFF many years ago and people would challenge me and got in experts leagues and....same excellent results.
Woohoo, well I had my moments where I questioned why this is something I'm great at and yet everyone else is a talented doctor or lawyer and making tons of money and look at me I give wdis advice.
Anyway, shortly after DFS I stopped sharing my thoughts and rankings and tiers and all. I don't have a website. I had become a single dad and it was make pay per click money to help others or win big $.
I am blessed or cursed with a big heart and I did my part. I "invented" a few things people still use. I stayed up late and woke early to email countless people back about wdis questions. I can remember ICQ having tons of messages to respond to there. I was fortunate to write for different papers and USA today/Gannett and get my articles in most papers across the country. I helped just about everyone with their website including the NFL. I did radio spots and...I struggled with and decided....I did my part, that's enough.
I was a finalist for that FF hall of fame the first 2-3 years and haven't even heard of my name being mentioned since. That stings.
I couldn't raise two young kids by myself, update a website twenty times a day, and respond to hundreds of emails per day on top of working a full time job. I could before kids but couldn't do both.
Wow rambling, bit too much about myself. Sorry as a has been I guess i do that sometimes.
I did a lot of research for a book I never got published. A whole lot of names y'all know told me their background to FF and I wrote that up. My uncle is an insane baseball artifacts(right word?) collector. He'd become wealthy and spend more n more on baseballs, jerseys, hats, bats etc. I once radio live streamed (pics in chat then) in his basement showing everyone. It's like his own hall of fame. Anyhow, one of the times he bought the whole lot of someone's collectibles, there were football notes and rankings before these guys mentioned in the OP. We had a heated argument of people saying there's no league records so it's not proof and others saying there's rankings and FF game scores so what are they for then.
A good while later, six months? someone bumped that thread with pics of old papers he found at a garage sale with a story how he found a signed football and sold it on ebay. We discussed and his papers were from a league before the one I found.
Brian Hullett? Hullett? had an FF site that was shut down due to 9/11 (twist? Real? How to word?) And IIRC he was the guy that had pages on his site of old FF stuff he found. One of the things I remember wasn't in this oldest category but just kinda cool. He found a letterman's jacket that would say league champ on it and pics of different men wearing it at a bar before their draft. I think that was the 80s. Ya know how we do trophies and other champ prizes? That was one of the first I heard of.
I can ramble on and on about this topic